Vista disappeared in dual boot

This is the situation:
1. I had Vista Business installed on my 80GB harddisk.
2. I installed Disk Director 10 on Vista machine and partitioned the Harddisk to 40 GB each. The second partition was created as Primary partition and named XP Pro and the drive as X:.
3. I installed OSS.
4. Then I hide the Vista partition and made the second XP Pro partition as Active and loaded my XP CD. OSS showed me the XP CD icon and booted through it.
5. XP has loaded, but I have lost Vista and am not able to get it despite all effort. I have re-activated OSS through XP but still I dont see Vista.

When you installed OSS (before you installed Vista), did OSS show Vista in the menu?

Have you tried booting to DD and setting the Vista partition Active and Hiding the XP partition? Rebooting with this configuration may let OSS detect Vista.

If that doesn't work and you have a standard (non-brand) Vista installation, boot to DD, set the Vista partition Active, hide the XP partition, boot to the Vista DVD and do a Repair. Hopefully, it will boot into Vista. Then reinstall OSS, if necessary (either from Vista or from the DD CD).

1. I bought Vista under Volume license and the Vista was installed through DVD.

2. In installed OSS on Vista and not before Vista was installed. In my machine I installed Vista first. Then DDS and OSS. Yes, Vista was visible in OSS afterI installed OSS on Vista. I in fact booted through OSS many times.

3. How do I boot to DD? Do you mean booting to OSS? After I have installed XP, I did not see OSS while booting which was not the case when Vista was installed. So I tried installing DDS and OSS on XP and it asked me whether I wanted to re-activate it on XP and I did. Now when I reboot, OSS is displayed but there is no Vista in the options.

I have been working on this issue since last few hours and I have just discovered an option under View menu named Show Hidden. When I checked that I see the Vista OS option there. So now I see both Vista as well as XP option there. But when I try to reboot from there it says that you aretrying to reboot into same OS where you are presently working. Looks like when XP installed, it replaced the boot files of Vista with itself and now I can only boot into XP. Any solutions?

I think the time I am investing in making this work is not worth it as I did not have any data on Vista that I can cry for. This is my R&D machine and I can afford to do things from scratch. Can you please tell me how to make my machine dual bootable. One one partition I want Vista and on one XP Pro.

It sounds like the BOOTWIZ.OSS file got messed up. You said in post #3 that Vista was booting okay from OSS. That's good and means that OSS recognized it okay. It was something in the way you installed XP that probably threw it off.

How to boot to DD? There are two ways. If you can boot to OSS, you can sometimes select to start DD from the Tools menu. The other way is to create a bootable DD CD using the Acronis Media Builder program (it should have been installed with a normal or custom installation).

I would create the DD CD (or start DD from OSS if the option is there) and try what I suggested in post #2:

Boot to DD, set the Vista partition Active, hide the XP partition, boot to the Vista DVD and do a Repair. Hopefully, it will boot into Vista. Then reinstall OSS, if necessary (either from Vista or from the DD CD).

Try this first. You should have a bootable DD CD on hand, in any case.

If it doesn't work, I can provide more detailed installation instructions.

I can see Vista and XP in OSS but clicking both boots into XP only and I am not able to boot into Vista. That's why I think I rather install both OS from scratch than spend time in troubleshooting this issue. Can you help me with steps for flawless dual booting system with Vista and XPPro?

1)Boot to the DD CD.
2)Use DD to clear the drive (remove all partitions).
I KEPT THE SELF-INSTALLING PARTITION FOR VISTA, SINCE I DO NOT HAVE A VISTA DVD

3) Decide where you want the small OSS partition (before or after the other partitions). I'm going to put it at the end in this example. YES

4) Create the partition for Vista - Primary NTFS
I FIGURED THE SELF-INSTALLING PARTITION FOR VISTA WOULD CREATE A VISTA PARTITION. IT DID NOT. IT INCREASED ITS SIZE WITH THE AVAILABLE UNALLOCATED SPACE

HERE IT WENT WRONG, OSS CAN'T FIND THE VISTA BOOT SECTOR: NOT IN THE PARTITION, WHICH IS PRIMARY AND ACTIVE, NOT IN THE MBR. IT SUGGESTS TO LOOK FOR THE BOOT SECTOR IN A FILE NAME. I HAVE NO CLUE AS TO WHAT FILE THAT WOULD BE ??

I WENT AHEAD TO DEACTIVATE OSS, ONLY TO FIND THAT THIS WAS NOT POSSIBLE: "no OS's were found on your computer. OSS deactivation cannot proceed" !!

Luckily I was able to reboot with the DD CD and deactivate OSS there...

Any suggestions on how to make OSS find my OEM VISTA are more than welcome. I would very much like to keep VISTA for future use and "downgrade" to XP on another partition

... and ACRONIS, DO YOU READ ?? .... this seems to be a well know problem with your software !

I'm coming from a position of ignorance because I don't use OS Selector, but the file that Vista boots to is called bootmgr. This file is located in the root directory of your Vista partition. It is a hidden, system file, so if you go looking for it be sure to display hidden files and folders and also to display protected operating system files. If you are looking from a command prompt, do dir /a to see all files.

thank you for your reply and help. I have found the bootmgr-file, reactivated OSS and made it look for the file: it cannot see it. I have tried, unsuccessfully, to unhide the file both in explorer and at the prompt using the attrib command. The file is in use. I find it strange that boot managing software cannot see hidden files that are crucial to the booting process.

I have posted a question on the OEM vista problem on the acronis support site. Sadly, no reply, altough this is a rather widely published problem on this forum.

I don't have a "Brand Name" OEM Vista computer to test with, but I have successfully managed to get OSS to boot Vista on a standard system where it wouldn't automatically find it and the Detection Wizard wouldn't find it.

I entered the Vista OSS menu entry manually into the BOOTWIZ.OSS file. This file is located on the partition OSS is installed on in the hidden BOOTWIZ folder.

Use the Windows Notepad program or boot to DD and browse the partition and edit the file. I prefer Notepad because it seems to cause less problems. I generally use my BartPE CD for this. IMPORTANT NOTE: If you use DD to edit the BOOTWIZ.OSS file DO NOT paste any text or copy and paste any text. It will corrupt the file.

Open the BOOTWIZ.OSS file and add the Vista entry.
Note: If OSS didn't find any OS installations, then you may just have the Floppy entry.

In the <oses> section, copy and paste (or type in) the new Vista entry. Use an ID number that is not used already. In the example below, I used 3082839084 for the ID.

Set the boot_partition=####### to the Vista partition ID value listed at the top of the BOOTWIZ.OSS file. In this example, it is 1184590092.

In the <partitions> sub-section of the Vista OS entry, make sure the Vista partition is active. You'll have to type in (or paste in) this entry. Once you boot to OSS, you can edit the properties for the entry to Hide any other partitions you need to.

In detail:
1) I located the file bootwiz.oss in the bootwiz folder on the OSS partition, booted with the DD CD, only to find the file empty.
2) I created a bartPE cd (at wich I am a total newbie) and booted my new HP notebook with it. BartPE could not locate any HD I prsume due to missing sata drivers.
3) Assuming studying bartPE in detail to add the drivers would be time consuming; in VISTA, I uninstalled OSS from its OSS partition (although seemingly nothing went wrong at the 1ste installation) and installed it again and booted from the DD CD. Big difference: bootwiz.oss contains data similar to your post above. I TYPED in the suggested lines, saved the file, activated OSS, rebooted VISTA and BINGO: OSS uses the date added to bootwiz.oss and shows VISTA as an installed OS. I can make it boot.

4) Now I will go ahead and try to install XP. Since bartPE didn’t find the HD, I assume my XP cd won’t either. I heard that having the drivers on a memory stick is also not working. I am now studying slipstreaming to create working XP cd.

I will keep the forum posted. Again, many thanks for your succesfull advice

I can see Vista and XP in OSS but clicking both boots into XP only and I am not able to boot into Vista. That's why I think I rather install both OS from scratch than spend time in troubleshooting this issue. Can you help me with steps for flawless dual booting system with Vista and XPPro?

Click to expand...

Hi vikassethi, as far as I know and experienced a few days ago, you have to install Vista (the newer OS) after XP (the older OS). Here is how I installed:
-loaded down Parted Magic (free and very good because Linux based)
-made an 80GB primary Partition NTFS, created the rest (420 GB) as an extended partition to accomplish later logical drives in there
-then I made the primary 80 GB smaller to 20 GB and got 60 GB unallocated space
-then I built a slipped XP-Setup-Boot-CD to provide the SATA drivers iastor.sys, ahci.inf etc. into the installation process
-now I installed XP using the above slipped CD into the 20 GB primary partition to the beginning of the harddisk
-then I installed Vista into the 60 GB and Vista's own bootmanager found an "Earlier Windows Version" (= Win-XP) and the boot menu gives you the 2 options, either to boot into Vista or into XP (the earlier Win-version).

Problem: If you installed XP with the normal bootable CD plus Vista onto a SATA HD, Vista will see the SATA HD but XP won't, unless you installed XP-SP2 with a slipped XP-setup-boot-CD.

Now you go and you will have a nice running dual-boot-system. Have a happy new year - astor

I am still trying to create a dual booting notebook with vista and xp. The finish line seems in sight, but i cannot reach it yet. The vista is HP-OEM, the HD is sata.

With help from MudCrab I have been able to make to make OSS recognize oem-vista and went on to install xp, according to his instructions above

The installation of xp proved very difficult, partly as expected because xp does not recognize the sata HD. Nlite (www.nliteos.com) brought help.
Additional problems arose with my xp cd’s and product keys. I have a dell oem xp sp1 CD with key and generic upgrade xp sp2 cd (a student version) with key. I didn’t want to use the dell cd because it is sp1 and because have experienced in the past that it would not boot other than dell pc’s. I guess it checks the bios for that. So I used to the upgrade (during the several installation attempts it sometimes asked for a xphome or win2K cd, but not always) cd and worked it with nlite. The installation failed at the point where the product key needs to be entered:unvalid. I used both the cd’s own key and the dell key. I got a generic oem xp sp2 cd from my dealer, worked it with nlite again and used my dell key: finally BINGO.

I have reformatted the partition intended for xp between each attempt. In between I reactivated oss once and noted that is had marked my xp installation attempts as an “unknown operating system”.

After the xp installation finally worked, I reactivated oss and found 2 “unknown operating systems” ! (next to vista). Before reactivating oss, I noted that, when I boot into xp, I have the choice between 2 “windows xp professional”. At different times, I have either not made a choice or choose the top one.

When in oss, i try to boot the unknown operating system (2), it fails and says that the file system of the operating system is not supported. The properties are as follows:

boot configuration: write the boot sector is ticked, the other items are not. (In the vista operation system properties, the write boot sector item is not ticked)

partitions:
vista (#1-1), not active, hidden
oss (#1-3), not active, not hidden
acronis sz (#1-5) active is grayed, not hidden
local disk (#1-2) avtive, not hidden, both tick boxes are grayed (i suppose my xp is here)
all are ntfs, except for acronis sz, which is fat32
note: there is no (#1-4)